This invention relates to wind wheels and in particular to wind wheels having paddle plates which are rotated to face wind in wind-direction travel and rotated edgewise in windward travel circumferentially.
For centuries ways have been sought and devised to make paddle plates of a wind wheel face wind in its direction of travel and avoid facing the wind in return portions of rotational travel. None, however, have provided the wind-use efficiency and low cost of rotational facing of paddle plates to face wind in a manner taught by this invention.
Different but related wind wheels are described in the following patent documents. U.S. Pat. No. 4,507,049, issued to Strandgren, taught a wind wheel with wing-shaped paddles that were positioned to utilize air foil for rotation. Japanese Patent Disclosure Number 57-186069, dated Nov.16, 1982, described a wind wheel with paddle plates rotated by shafts extended from a worm type of planetary gear. Japanese Patent Number 61-38171, issued on Feb.24, 1986 taught a hydraulic means for positioning wind buckets or paddles in and out of the path of wind in rotational travel of a wind wheel. French Patent Number 2,291,379 taught a wind turbine with wing-shaped airfoils that were rotated with central gearing from-foil-to-foil for positioning the airfoils optimally for utilization of air current to rotate the wind turbine. U.S. Pat. No. 1,790,175, issued to Spencer, described a wind wheel with paddle plates rotated by shafts extended from a worm type of planetary gear in a slightly different manner than taught by the above Japanese Patent Disclosure Number 57-186068. U.S. Pat. No. 1,618,549, issued to O'Toole taught rotational paddle plates that were sprocket driven with a sprocket gear affixed to a rigid axle of a wind wheel. In 1867, U.S. Pat. No. 69,374, issued to Thornton, taught a wind wheel with a stationary planetary sprocket gear that rotated sprocket gears on axles to which paddle plates were attached.
Positioning a return-rotational portion of a wind wheel below or behind a surface was taught by other patents to direct wind against only a portion of the wind wheel that traveled with the wind. Included in this type of wind wheel were U.S. Pat. No. 5,472,311, that was issued to Davis; U.S. Pat. No. 5,348,443, that was issued to Roberts; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,678,394, that was issued to Willoughby.